Category Archives: Monthly Meeting Reports

The Federal Point Historic Preservation Society will hold its monthly meeting on Monday, November 16 at 7:30 pm at the Federal Point History Center, 1121-A North Lake Park Blvd., adjacent to Carolina Beach Town Hall.

Ellen Kure

Hans A. Kure

Our program this month will be a showing a section of the video The Kure Family Legacy made in 1991, produced by the Kure Family. Featured in the narration are A.E. “Punky” Kure, Pat Robertson Rice, Mike Robertson and the late Jennie Kure Robertson Bagley.

The story concentrates on the early years from Hans Anderson Kure and his wife Ellen‟s immigration to America and the establishment of their family in Wilmington.

Hans was a ship’s chandler and owner of numerous warehouses and steamers in the early 1890s, when Wilmington was a large and prosperous port. We learn about the first generation, William, Hans, Lawrence, Andrew, and Elene.

Invited to join us for the evening are “Punky” Kure, Mike Robertson, and Pat Rice who will answer questions and lead a discussion on the history of the Kure Family.

The program is in memory of Jennie Bagley, who passed away in September. She was a charter member of Kure Lutheran Memorial Church, and worked at UNC-Wilmington and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Her memories provide a fascinating peek at the early years of the development of Fort Fisher Seabeach, and the Kure Beach pier.

Monthly Meeting Report for November, 2009 – Published in the December, 2009 Newsletter

Over 50 people enjoyed a segment of the The Kure Family Legacy DVD. The segment covered the very early years of Hans and Ellen Kure’s lives and how they came to America and to the North Carolina Coast.

They must have been truly amazing people. Ellen Kure went from being a lady-in-waiting to the Royal Court in Denmark to raising a family and helping her husband build up his business in the primitive conditions of Kure Beach and the more civilized conditions of Wilmington (Most years they spent summers at the beach and winters in Wilmington) before the turn to the twentieth century.

I just love this note in the Bill Reaves files:

“July 4, 1895 FEDERAL POINT. A large number of people visited Carolina Beach and spent a quiet, pleasant day. There was music for dancing all day, which was taken advantage of by a large number. Several fishing parties went out in the afternoon. The surf bathers were on hand in large numbers. Mrs. Mayo and Mrs. Kure had all they could do serving guests with sea delicacies. The last boat to Wilmington returned at 9:30 p.m. and the ride on the river was delightful. WILM.STAR, 7-6-1895.”

A huge thanks to “Punky” Kure, Pat Rice, and “Curly” Shands for answering questions and adding comentary at the end of the film.

Did You Know?Excerpts from David Stick’s Bald Head: The History of Smith Island and Cape Fear

William S. Powell, distinguished historian and author of the definitive North Carolina Gazetteer, says that the name Bald Head is properly applied only to a small area of no more than a few hundred acres occupying the extreme southwest portion of the southernmost of the islands in the complex.

The name CAPE FEAR first appeared on a map drawn by a member of Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1585 colony en route to Roanoke Island, stating: “wee were in great danger of a Wracke on a breache called the Cape of Feare.”

The vast areas of Smith Island marshland and the tidal creeks winding among them provide a productive spawning ground for a variety of marine creatures, not the least of which are oysters, shrimp, clams, and crabs, as well as a number of fin-fish, including spot and mullet.

Bald Head’s best-known and most-publicized marine visitor is the giant loggerhead turtle, which sometimes weighs as much as half a ton. Awareness of the plight of the endangered loggerheads is especially acute on Bald Head, where a unique cooperative arrangement involving the developer, residents, the Nature Conservancy, and government agencies has resulted in an active “Turtle Watch” program.

Landgrave Thomas Smith, a prominent merchant from Charlestown, secured a grant for the island on which Cape Fear was located on May 8, 1713 for the purpose of trading with the Indians.

In September 1717 the notorious pirate Stede Bonnett was captured by Colonel Rhett in the waters of the Cape Fear River adjacent to Bald Head Island.

During the War of Jenkins’ Ear (cir. 1740’s) a Spanish man-of-war appeared off Bald Head, harassing vessels entering Port Brunswick and commandeering others departing North Carolina with naval stores. As a result Fort Johnston was begun for the defense of the Cape Fear River.

Benjamin Smith , the last of the heirs of Landgrave Thomas Smith to hold title to Smith Island and Bald Head, died in 1826 following a distinguished career in which he served as an aide de camp to General Washington as well as Governor of North Carolina, 1810-1811.

In 1784 the North Carolina Assembly authorized a special duty of six pence per ton to be paid by all vessels entering the Cape Fear, the proceeds to be used for “erecting beacons and buoys at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.” By 1789 there was enough money in the hands of the commissioners to begin construction of a lighthouse on Bald Head. Benjamin Smith, a member of the commission and owner of Bald Head, donated 10 acres, with the stipulation “that no person, shall be allowed to carry or keep on the said island, or any part thereof, any cattle, hogs, or stock of any kind.” The lighthouse keeper was permitted to keep poultry, a cow, and a calf but anyone found hunting on the Island would be fined five pounds the first time and ten pounds for each succeeding offense.

John J. Hedrick, an engineer from Wilmington and commander of the Confederate “Cape Fear Minute Men” was put in charge of the building of Fort Holmes on the west side of Bald Head. The primary mission of the 1,400 men of the 40th Regiment, North Carolina Troops under Hedrick’s command was to prevent enemy landings anywhere on Smith Island; another was to go to the aid of any friendly vessel unfortunate enough to run aground on or near the island.

An early plan, in the 1920’s and 30’s, for development of what the promoter called “Palmetto Island” resulted in clearing for proposed roads, and construction of a pier, a pavilion, and a partially completed hotel.

Frank O. Sherrill of Charlotte purchased Bald Head Island in 1938 with plans for a major resort which would include a four lane “ocean highway” down the East Beach from Fort Fisher – to be paid for by the State of NC. In 1963 he consolidated his holdings by purchasing the federal property surrounding the two Lightstations and Lifesaving Station.

In 1972 the Carolina Cape Fear Corporation purchased Bald Head from Frank Sherrill and announced development plans; however, politics, an economic recession, and a new public awareness of the value of undeveloped natural areas doomed their project to failure.

Today 10,000 acres of marsh and estuary belong to the State of North Carolina. The Bald Head Island Conservancy and the North Carolina Nature Conservancy are involved in managing the undeveloped land.

[Editor’s Note: Harry Warren, Director of the North Carolina Forestry Museum in Whiteville, NC, passed this article along to us during his presentation at our August meeting. We thought it was so good that we wanted to share it with all the membership.]

A San Francisco magazine, Overland Monthly, in its August 1869 issue, published an article on slang and nicknames. The author cited a number of terms used in the Old North State. “A story is related,” he wrote, “of a brigade of North Carolinians, who, in one of the great battles (Chancellorsville, if I remember correctly) failed to hold a certain hill and were laughed at by the Mississippians for having forgotten to tar their heels that morning. Hence originated their cant name ‘Tarheels.’”

A piece of sheet music, Wearin’ of the Grey, identified as “Written by Tar Heel” and published in Baltimore in 1866, is probably the earliest printed use of Tar Heel.

On New Year’s Day, 1868, Stephen Powers set out from Raleigh on a walking tour that in part would trace in reverse the march of Gen. William T. Sherman at the end of the Civil War. As a part of his report on North Carolina, Powers described the pine woods of the state and the making of turpentine. Having entered South Carolina, he recorded in this 1872 book, Afoot & Alone, that he spent the night “with a young man, whose family were away, leaving him all alone in a great mansion. He had been a cavalry sergeant, wore this hat on the side of his head, and had an exceedingly confidential manner.”

“You see, sir, the Tar heels haven’t no sense to spare,” Powers quotes the sergeant as saying. “Down there in the pines the sun don’t more’n half bake their heads. We always had to show ‘em what the Yankees was, or they’d charge to the rear, the wrong way, you see.”

As in this particular case, for a time after the Civil War, the name Tar Heel was derogatory, just as Tar Boilers had been earlier. In Congress on Feb. 10, 1875, a black representative from South Carolina had kind words for many whites, whom he described as “noble-hearted, generous hearted people.” Others he spoke of as “the class of men thrown up by the war, that fine class of men I mean, the ‘tar heels’ and the ‘sand hillers,’ and the ‘dirt eaters’ of the South – it is with that class we have all our trouble…” The name also had a bad connotation in an entry in the 1884 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica which reported that the people who lived in the region of pine forests were “far superior to the tar heel, the nickname of the dwellers in barrens.”

The New York Tribune further differentiated among North Carolinians on Sept. 20, 1903, when it observed that “the men really like to work, which is all but incomprehensible to the true ‘tar heel’”.

At home, however, the name was coming to be accepted with pride. In Pittsboro on Dec. 11, 1879, the Chatham Record informed its readers that Jesse Turner had been named to the Arkansas Supreme Court. The new justice was described as “a younger brother of our respected townsman, David Turner, Esq., and we are pleased to know that a fellow tar heel is thought so much of in the state of his adoption.” In Congress in 1878, Rep. David B. Vance, trying to persuade the government to pay one of his constituents, J.C. Clendenin, for building a road, described Clendenin in glowing phrases, concluding with: “He is an honest man…he is a tar heel.” In 1893, the students of The University of North Carolina founded a newspaper and christened it The Tar Heel. By the end of the century, Tar Heel – at least within the state – had been rehabilitated. John R. Hancock of Raleigh wrote Sen. Marion Butler on Jan. 20, 1899, to commend him for his efforts to obtain pensions for Confederate veterans. This is an action, Hancock wrote, “we Tar Heels, or a large majority of us, do most heartily commend.” And by 1912, it was a term of clear identification recognized outside the state. On August 26 of that year, The New York Evening Post identified Josephus Daniels and Thomas J.L. Pence as two Tar Heels holding important posts in Woodrow Wilson’s campaign.

So there it was in 1922, the stamp of credibility on Tar Heel. Surely an august institution such as The New York Evening Post would never malign two gentlemen of the stature of Daniels and Pence, no matter how bitter the presidential election campaign. The badge of honor stuck, and, in a manner of speaking, North Carolina residents who have sat back on their heels ever since, happy to be Tar Heels. Who’d want to be a Sandlapper, anyway?

We are Tar Heels – not “Tarheels”Always write our name as two words, even when usingit as an adjective (e.g., “The Tar Heel tradition”Tar [space] Heels

[Editor’s Note: Harry Warren, Director of the North Carolina Forestry Museum in Whiteville, NC, passed this article along to us during his presentation at our August meeting. We thought it was so good we wanted to share it with all the membership.]

We all have had to deal with the problem at one point or another, particularly when we go abroad (more than two states away) and declare our state of residence. “Oh, that’s such a beautiful state,” folks respond, before pausing. “But why are you called Tar Heels?”

The why comes easily, but when it all started takes explaining. In fact, history shows that North Carolina residents have taken an albatross from around their necks and pinned it on their chests like a badge of honor. The moniker is rooted in the state’s earliest history, derived from the production of naval stores – tar, pitch and turpentine – extracted from the vast pine forests of the state. Early explorers from Jamestown pointed out the possibilities for naval stores production along the Chowan River. Eventually Parliament offered a bounty for their production, and North Carolina became an important source of tar and pitch for the English navy. For several years before the American Revolution, the colony shipped more than 100,000 barrels of tar and pitch annually to England.

The distillation process for tar and pitch was messy and smelly. Rich pine logs were stacked, covered with earth and burned. The tar ran out through channels dug on the lower side of the pile. Because of this product, so extensively produced in North Carolina, the people of the state were called “Tarboilers,” according to the first volume of the Cincinnati Miscellany and Ohio journal published in 1845. Forty-three years later, the poet Walt Whitman also recorded that the people of North Carolina were called “Tar Boilers.” In both cases the name clearly was applied in derision. In May 1856, Harper’s Magazine mentioned someone who “lost his way among the pine woods that abounded in that tar and turpentine state,” while an 1876 book on the Centennial Exposition described someone who “‘spent his youth in the good old ‘Tar and Turpentine State.’”

A story that at best must be considered folklore states that when Lord Cornwallis’s troops forded the Tar River in early May 1781 en route to Yorktown, they emerged with tar on their feet. This marked their passage through North Carolina as tar heels. The tar reputedly had been hastily dumped into the river to prevent the British from capturing it. This story cannot be traced beyond the 20th century and may have been made up to suggest the naming of the river.

But when, beyond doubt, did the term Tar Heel begin to be applied to North Carolinians? Clearly during the Civil War. In the third volume of Walter Clark’s Histories of the Several Regiments from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861-1865, published in 1901, James M. Ray of Asheville records two incidents in 1863 that suggest the nickname’s original application. In a fierce battle in Virginia, where their supporting column was driven from the field, North Carolina troops stood alone and fought successfully. The victorious troops were asked in a condescending tone by some Virginians who had retreated, “Any more tar down in the Old North State, boys?” The response came quickly: “No; not a bit; old Jeff’s bought it all up.” “Is that so? What is he going to do with it?” the Virginians asked. “He is going to put it on your heels to make you stick better in the next fight.”

After the Battle of Murfeesboro in Tennessee in early January 1863, John S. Preston of Columbia, S.C., the commanding general, rode along the fighting line commending his troops. Before the 60th Regiment from North Carolina, Preston praised them for advancing farther than he had anticipated, concluding with: “This is your first battle of any consequence, I believe. Indeed, your Tar Heels have done well.”

Similarly, sometime after North Carolina troops had fought particularly well, Gen. Robert E. Lee is said to have commented: “God bless the Tar Heel boys.” Like the Cornwallis story, however, the exact occasion has not been noted.